What's so tricky about oil that it took so many attempts to make a pipeline? Other materials were flowing through pipelines for more than a hundred years at that point.
I'm sorry, but what major, high-flow, long-distance pipelines are you referring to having existed prior to 1859?
I'm not aware of any particularly significant examples.
The major exception would be water aqueducts, but these were not generally pipelines.
No major city had a long-distance water conduit or sewerage system by that time. London was just building its own sewerage system in 1860, and that comprised vaulted chambers of brick.
New York City's Catskills water system wasn't completed until 1915.
What was difficult was that, fundamentally, industrial manufacturing did not exist. Other than a small number of powered looms and ironworks.
That's cast and wrought iron. Bessemer steel had only just been patented (1856), but production wasn't scaled up for a number of years (initial attempts to license the method failed when licensees were unable to properly implement it).
Industrialisation is a rather significant bootstrapping process. Titusville Pennsylvania was a rural region, on the frontier, without access to viable transportation (that is, rivers or canals). Railroads existed, but with iron rather than steel rail, had limited tonnage capacity and were prone to splits rails.
Given that this is downhill (slightly; about 70 meters over 40km), according to Wikipedia, it wouldn't surprise me if this wasn't pressurized, though, and that, I think, is the essential difference between a covered duct and a pipeline.
China was piping natural gas over long distances in bamboo for many centuries before then. It would have been flowing for over a thousand years by 1859.
That's true, though I've found information on this very hard to come by.
Keep in mind as well that natural gas differs markedly from petroleum on a number of accounts: it's lighter, leaks in open air are somewhat less a problem (the gas dissipates rather than pooling on the ground and contaminating soil, buildings, etc.). Though it's also a terrific fire hazard, which makes me wonder about China's experience with this.
Joseph Needham's Science and Civilisation in China is apparently one of the authoritiative sources. I've access to a copy nearby, and may see what turns up there.
Otherwise: there's little mention of major pipelines. Take the following academic article, which makes mention of clay, stone, lead, and copper piping of ancient Egypt and Rome, briefly mentions China ... and then skips forward to Colonel Drake and Titusville.
The case that there was a booming practice of laying pipe prior to 1859 doesn't stand to inspection.
It seems from a cursory search that they weren't pipelines so much as vessels that people carried around, like a primitive propane tank, but that's still pretty impressive.
"During the Tang dynasty, a gazetteer of Sichuan province stated that at one of these 182 m (600 ft) 'fire wells', men collected natural gas into portable bamboo tubes which could be carried around for dozens of km (mi) and still produce a flame.[287] These were essentially the first gas cylinders; Robert Temple assumes some sort of tap was used for this device.[287]"
Can also find evidence of them sticking a bamboo shoot into the well and lighting the gas that comes out on fire. But not anything concrete about them piping it long distances.
True, but see elsewhere in this thread: there's documentation of fairly extensive piping systems, though specific quantitative assessments are hard to find. I've been looking off-and-on for a few years.
thaumasiotes's comment above was worse than useless.
I think part of it is the distance - we've moved stuff through pipes before, but not the distance involved here. Leaky connections add up after a while.
Also, you know, it's rather flammable, which always adds some potential excitement.
The article wrote about the challenge in making pipes two miles long. And the challenges written about in the article about early pipelines were about leaking, never about flammability.
